As a child I absolutely loved playing with LEGOs. They were the ultimate toy - simple parts that could be combined in clever ways to create the kind of things I wanted to play with. I was especially drawn to the Bionicle line of products, which applied that creative freedom to action figures.
3D printing started becoming more open-source while I was in college, and for my senior thesis I chose to explore the opportunity that 3D printing presented for creating truly custom modular toys.
I found that many of the toy lines in the 6-14 age range were sold with a story that was based around battle and conflict; the classic tale of good versus evil. After ideating and reflecting on how I wanted to inspire play with these characters, I chose to take a different narrative path that focused on exploration and discovery to impart a more positive and creative message on the user.
At the heart of every successful toy line is the story, a foundational element of play. I created a simple narrative hook that opens the door to themes of exploration, adventure, and space, without explicitly introducing elements of fighting, conflict, or violence.
“On the moon of a planet in a different galaxy, a familiar satellite crashes down. Itri, the main character of the story, stumbles upon the wreckage of an object that looks like nothing he’s ever seen. Immediately catching his attention is a golden disc with strange markings. Itri could not understand the markings on the disc, but brings it back to his space ship to analyze, unaware of the adventure he had just stepped into…”
Itri
Driven to discover the origin of the mysterious golden disc, Itri will travel the stars and make some new friends along the way.
Amet
Amet is the first of many friends Itri makes on his journey. Living their entire life beneath the thick clouds of a gas giant, Amet is excited to experience what lies beyond their known world.
Taking cues from LEGO and other modular toys, the Star Seekers figures are built around a modular skeleton with unique character parts. These parts can be assembled, disassembled, and combined to create entirely new characters to inspire extended play.
